Chapter 909 — The Price of Knowledge

With every word Gaoyang spoke, Metzen's eyes seemed to widen a fraction more, until at last the dragon lady could not help interrupting him: "Wait! It mentions my name? You're saying the adventurer who left the travelogue claims he knows me? That he saw me in the Arctic region? How could that..."

Gao Yan nodded. "It seems you have no recollection of this at all, do you?"

"I... have no recollection," Metzen said, her face full of confusion. She had never imagined that she, a senior agent whose duty had always been to provide advisory services, should one day find herself the one steeped in confusion, in need of answers. "I have never met any human adventurer near Talongde, let alone taken anyone near that tower... That would violate the taboo, do you understand? The taboo..."

"All right, I think I understand. We'll discuss this in detail later," Gaoyang said. Noticing that the lady agent's mental strain seemed to be rising sharply, he—a man of rich experience in the field of "driving people to sudden death" (Metzen only)—immediately set this topic aside and steered the conversation onward. "This travelogue mentions another idea as well, an unfamiliar term... Do you know what 'the Pathfinders' means?"

Metzen had actually breathed a sigh of relief when Gaoyang changed the subject, but she never managed to let that breath out—when the words "the Pathfinders" reached her ears directly, she felt a simultaneous *boom* in her mind and in the depths of her soul, and amid that roar unbearable to a dragon she also heard Gaoyang's following words: "...What does the Pathfinders' legacy refer to? Is it a product of knowledge? Is it connected to some 'secret' your dragon race has been keeping—"

For the first time since becoming a senior agent, Metzen tried to block or refuse to answer a client's questions—yet Gaosong's words seemed to possess some sorcery that pierced straight through the safety protocols she had set for herself. It proved that this human truly was peculiar: Metzen found she could not even shut down portions of her nervous system in an emergency, could not stop thinking about the relevant questions and feeling the "urge to answer." By instinct she began to consider those answers, and the instant they surfaced, her "true body," folded into the interstice between the elements and the present world, immediately transmitted overload detection signals—

The lady agent staggered on the spot, her face turning dreadfully pale in an instant, and behind her surfaced an abnormal shadow like a dragon's wing.

Gaoyang was startled by this intense and wholly unexpected reaction, and rose from behind the desk at once. "Are you all right?"

Metzen waved a hand through her pain and managed two unsteady steps to the desk. Bracing herself on it, she steadied herself again, and then, oddly distraught, she murmured to herself: "It blew... the thirty-eight-thousand one blew..."

"What blew? What thirty-eight thousand?" Gaoyang had heard her clearly enough, but understood none of it. "My apologies. It seems this was my fault..."

"No... you didn't mean to, and this may even be reimbursable..." Metzen waved her hand again and said with a bitter smile, her voice low. "Very well, I must do my duty. Your question... I can answer only in part. The so-called Pathfinders are an ancient civilization that has already departed this world, and their legacy is the root of the 'Rebellion of the Reversed Tide' in days gone by. Yes—that 'Book of Ultimates' you found back then... I told you it was meant to steal knowledge, and what the Reversed Tide Empire stole with it was precisely the legacy the Pathfinders left behind. That legacy must never be divulged, still less fall into the hands of a lesser mortal civilization. That is all I can tell you."

An ancient civilization that had already departed this world... the root cause of the Reverse Tide Rebellion... a legacy that must not fall into the hands of a lower-order civilization...

Metzene said she could answer only part of it, yet those few key points she did answer were already enough to resolve most of Gao Yang's doubts!

In truth, he had already vaguely guessed the meaning of the so-called "Voyagers" back when he first read Mo Jin's travelogue, guessed what those legacies and the great tower referred to, and Metzene's answer fully confirmed his conjecture: what the dragon race called the "Voyagers" were precisely that mysterious "Godslayer Fleet," that ancient civilization which had left a great mass of satellites and orbital facilities scattered across space!

And the "Reverse Tide Empire" of the ancient era, after coming into contact with the legacy (knowledge) of the "Godslayer Fleet," had triggered a massive crisis that ultimately led to the Reverse Tide Rebellion. Gao Yang had previously obtained clues about this from many quarters, but this time was the first occasion he had received direct, definite intelligence concerning the "Godslayer Fleet" from Metzene's own mouth.

On the whole, Metzene's answers had merely confirmed, one by one, the things Gao Yang had already conjectured or possessed circumstantial evidence for, and had strung certain previously isolated clues into a coherent whole. To Gao Yang, this was in fact only the opening of a series of questions, but to Metzene... it seemed these "small questions" had brought unforeseen trouble.

This made Gao Yang feel somewhat apologetic.

"My apologies, my questions were rash," he said at once, apologizing to Metzene—he did not care about any so-called "bearing of a ruler," and moreover the other party was his first dragon friend, and sincere apology was an essential condition for maintaining friendship. "If you think it necessary, we can stop here."

"It's all right," Metzene said at once with a shake of her head. She readjusted her breathing and once again became that elegant and composed senior agent of the Mithril Vault. "My professional ethics do not permit me to do so—continue the consultation. I am still well enough."

"Very well, I will be careful with my next questions and try not to touch on 'dangerous territory,'" Gao Dai said, while sorting through the questions he had prepared in his mind. "It should be no problem for me to ask you about a name, should it? It may be someone you know."

Metzene breathed a sigh of relief at once, and even revealed a relaxed smile again. "Of course, of course that is no problem."

Gao Yan nodded. "Do you know a dragon called Enya?"

Metzene's expression changed at once.

The forty-two-thousand one blew up too.